John reached out his arm until the tips of her fingers were just a snowflake away from his.
“We stopped doing it after she died,” Anna said quietly. Without a sound, she took his hand in hers. The friends in the snow, looking up at the sky. The clouds had cleared away, leaving a deep, endless darkness, speckled with pinpricks of starlight.
“John?”
“Anna?”
“What if Dad’s right?” she asked, breathing out as she confessed her concerns. “What if I’m just screwing everything up by going traveling?”
“You’re Anna Shepherd,” he said, turning his head to face her so that his cheek rested in the cold snow. “We both know you’re going to end up having some stupidly successful life. It doesn’t matter how you do it.”
He grinned at his friend and squeezed her hand.
“Big Tony doesn’t need to worry about you out there on your own,” he promised. “Besides, you won’t be on your own for long. I’ll come and visit you. We can hike across the outback together.”
“That’s a pretty long hike,” Anna said, giggling, suddenly sure of her decision again. “Are you sure you’re up to it?”
“I’ll start running to school,” he reassuringly promised. “Get fit. Do we have a deal?”
“We have a deal,” she agreed, smiling at him while propping herself up on her elbows. One bright star in particular twinkled overhead, and for a moment, she wondered if it was the star from the Christmas story. “So, where were we before you tried to murder a defenseless little old lady? We’ve got Dasher and Dancer … Is Bashful a reindeer?”
“That’s a dwarf,” John replied, giving her a look. “There’s Olive, though. They mention Olive in the Rudolph song.”
“In what song?” Anna looked confused. “Because unless you’ve heard a different version of Rudolph from the rest of the world, there’s no Olive the Reindeer.”
“Yeah, she’s the one who laughs at him,” John insisted. “Olive the other reindeer used to laugh and call him names.”
Anna threw her head back, cackling with laughter. John really was the best friend she’d ever had. He always knew just how to cheer her up. She was firmly of the opinion that everyone on Earth should have their own John.
“Olive was a dick,” John said. “Bullying poor Rudolph like that.”
Anna laughed affectionately, lying back down in the snow. She smiled at him, then stared back up at that one bright star in the sky. John smiled back at his friend.
If only this moment could last forever, he thought to himself, then everything would be okay.
He didn’t realize how right he was.
9
THE NEXT MORNING, Anna woke up feeling surprisingly well rested. She yawned, smiling at the shaft of sunlight shining through her curtains, then rolled over to check her phone.
“Shitwank!” she gasped, throwing off her covers.
No wonder she felt so well rested: It was eight thirty. She’d been concentrating so hard on creeping in without waking her dad the night before, she’d forgotten to set her alarm and overslept. She had exactly ten minutes to get ready for school and get out the door, otherwise she’d be late. The last thing she needed was to spend the last day of the term in detention with Savage. Literally the least festive thing imaginable.
She showered, dressed, and while quickly blasting her hair with a hair dryer, a photograph she’d stuck to her mirror caught her eye. It was of her and her mum and dad, laughing their heads off on the log flume at a theme park they’d visited summers ago. They looked so happy. Anna felt a sudden pang of guilt. He didn’t want her to go because he didn’t want to lose her. All he needed was her reassurance that she’d come home, that she wasn’t going to disappear from his life forever.
“Dad?” she called.
No response.
He must have left for school without her.
Anna thought of his Christmas present she’d had hidden under her bed for weeks. Months ago, she’d seen him practically salivating over some ridiculous, shiny silver toolbox in Haven Hardware but knew he’d never buy it for himself. Tony never spent a penny on himself unless he absolutely had to, and so she’d taken the money from her precious traveling fund, marched down the high street, and lugged that toolbox all the way home. She couldn’t wait to see the look on his face on Christmas morning.
“Maybe John’s right,” she said, throwing down her hair dryer, grabbing her earbuds and plugging them into her phone as she ran out of her room. “I am getting soft.”
Outside, the sun shone, and even though it was cold, the weather was bright and cheerful. Snow on the ground, a nip in the air, and only eight hours between Anna and the Christmas holidays. She stuck in her earbuds, turned up the music, and oblivious to all else, strode off down the street.
* * *
John was also running late for school, but not because he’d overslept. Ever true to his word, he’d woken up early, determined to run all the way to Little Haven High School. Only ten minutes in, he’d gotten a terrible stitch in his side and now he was hobbling his way through the park, desperate to make it in time for roll call. He was leaning against the fence, about to give up and collapse on the slide when he spotted a figure that looked suspiciously like Anna Shepherd crossing the footpath toward him.
“Hey!” she called. “Check out Usain Bolt!”
John held up a feeble hand, clinging to the fence for dear life. “Get it together, son,” he whispered to himself. “Get it together.”
Right as he forced himself upright, the wooden slats shattered ten feet away from him and a man in a six-foot-tall snowman costume crashed through the fence, falling to the ground in front of Anna. Immediately, John righted himself and ran to her side. Anna was already on her knees, trying to help.
“Hello, can you hear me?” she asked, earbuds swinging around her neck. “I’m a first aider. I’m just going to turn you over—”
But as they rolled him, the pair jerked backward in horror. The white fleecy snowman costume was covered in sticky red and black patches and stank of something far worse than sweaty feet and cigarettes. Underneath the silk black hat, a man’s face peered out of the costume, but something was very, very wrong. The whites of his eyes were red and his irises were gray, and at first, John thought he had meat smeared all around his face, but when Anna rolled him over and his jaw went slack, John realized his skin was missing. It wasn’t meat, it was his bare, raw flesh. The skin from the entire lower half of his face was missing.
And then the snowman moved.
Arms outstretched, unearthly gurgling and blood oozing out of its mouth, it lurched at the pair of them. Without thinking, Anna swung her schoolbag with all her force, hitting it right in the head. With a thunk, the snowman tumbled back to the ground. And then it rose again.
Anna and John screamed, clinging to each other’s arms and running through the playground, dodging the swings, scrambling around the seesaw, and legging it around the merry-go-round as the snowman gave chase. Even though they’d been playing on this playground since they were little kids, they ended up trapped, stuck between the seesaw and the swings.
“Mate,” John wailed, shaking from head to toe. “Come on, mate!”
“Call him ‘mate’ again,” Anna said sarcastically, looking all around them for an escape route. “It’s definitely helping.”
She looked at the seesaw and then at the lumbering, blood-covered snowman. Anna had an idea.
“You stay there,” she ordered John, who didn’t seem entirely capable of moving, even if he’d wanted to. Anna crept slowly behind the snowman as it moved closer and closer to her friend.
“Anna?” John yelled, one eye on his friend, the other on the monstrous Mr. Frosty in front of him. “Anna? ANNA!”
Just as the snowman snatched at John, Anna pushed as hard as she could on her end of the seesaw. The other end flew into the air, the seat catching their attacker under the chin, and taking off its entire head. A fountain of blood and gut
s gushed up into the air as its body crumpled to the ground and the head rolled to a stop at John’s feet. Still clutching his backpack to its chest, John looked down at the disembodied head in front of him.
And then he screamed. And screamed. And screamed.
* * *
Two minutes later, they both sat quietly on the swings, mobile phones in their hands as they rocked back and forth in a state of shock, staring at the lifeless body of the decapitated snowman.
“No signal,” Anna said, waving her phone in the air to no effect.
“Me either,” John croaked as he jumped off the swing.
No one came to help when he screamed. No one sent a text to see why he wasn’t at school, and he hadn’t seen a single soul on his run that morning. John had a very bad feeling about this.
“Anna, that guy.” He pointed to the snowman’s body. And then his head, lying several feet away from said body. “He’s a—”
“Don’t say it,” Anna interrupted.
“But he is, though.”
“But he’s not, though.”
“He’s a zombie,” John finished his sentence, even though he couldn’t even believe it himself.
“There’s no such thing,” Anna replied in denial, pushing her hair away from her face. Why couldn’t she get a hold of her dad? All she wanted was to know if he was okay.
“Yeah, right. Because that’s perfectly normal.” He pointed at the snowman’s head. Even though Anna had most certainly removed it from his shoulders, it kept blinking and gnashing its teeth at them, still determined to put up a bodiless fight.
“It’s a zombie,” John said decidedly. “What else could it be?”
Anna searched for an alternative. Maybe he had rabies. Maybe it was a drug trial gone wrong. Maybe he’d had a bad mince pie and that’s what really awful food poisoning looked like. Anything but the Z-word.
“This can’t be happening,” John said. He dropped his hands to his knees and doubled over, his breath coming far too quickly. Everything began closing in on him, and suddenly he was quite sure he was going to be sick.
There was a zombie snowman in Little Haven, and if that wasn’t bad enough, it looked as though the internet was down.
“Use your inhaler,” Anna instructed, rubbing her friend’s back. “You’re having an asthma attack.”
“When was the last time you saw me with an inhaler?” John snapped. He hadn’t had an asthma attack in four years, he didn’t even carry an inhaler anymore. Why did she always have to see him as a child?
“Don’t have a go at me just because…” Anna trailed off as they both looked down at the snapping head.
“Because there’s zombies?” John finished for her.
But Anna refused to even entertain it.
“It’s not zombies, don’t be stupid,” she said, biting her fingernails. Once again, John pointed at the head as it tried to roll itself over, using its mouth to gnaw its way along the ground to get closer to them.
“I didn’t see my folks this morning,” John said in a quiet, worried voice. “Did you?”
“I shouldn’t have worked last night,” Anna said, shaking her head. “I should have gone to the show like Dad asked me to.”
John put an awkward arm around her shoulder as Anna wrapped her arms around his waist.
“Oi, are you trying to—?” Anna yelped, pushing him away.
“What? No!” John looked mortified. Mostly because he was.
A loud rumble of an explosion echoed across the town. Anna checked her phone screen again. Still nothing.
“Shit,” she muttered.
“Internet might still work on my computer,” John suggested. “But I don’t fancy running back home, do you?”
Home was too far away, school was too far away. Anna tried to think of the closest place they could possibly get online.
“Chris’s place isn’t that far away?” John ventured.
“Wrong direction,” Anna said, filled with cold dread for their friends. They had to get help immediately, people needed to know about this. “Do you have your keys for Thunderballs?”
John patted himself down and pulled a ring full of keys out of his coat pocket.
“All right,” Anna said, leaping off the swing. “Let’s go.”
She paused for a moment, looking back at the snowman. Half an hour ago, she was on her way to school, and now she was looking for an internet connection to find out whether or not the world was ending. On the ground, the snowman head was munching on something. Anna and John both retched when they realized it was a dead cat.
“Suppose it might not be so bad, further into town,” John said, pulling her away from the nightmarish scene.
“Yeah,” Anna agreed still stunned. “Maybe you’re right.”
But she had a horrible feeling he wasn’t.
10
“THAT’S ENOUGH!”
Savage blew his whistle so loudly, dogs on the other side of the Atlantic stood at attention. Everything went quiet. The assembled parents and children all shut up at once, cowering and covering their ears. Savage moved through the crowd, whistle swinging from a chain around his neck, clipboard in one hand, utterly mad power trip in the other.
According to the clock on the wall, it was five minutes to nine. Almost exactly twelve hours since he opened the doors to the parking lot after the show and saw them descending upon the school. Those monstrous, evil creatures. He barricaded the doors, he had led everyone to safety and corralled them into the cafeteria. He looked around at his dominion, aka the school lunchroom, and smiled. Dozens of parents and children all stared back at him, fear in their eyes, confusion on their faces, all of them looking to Arthur Savage to save the day. His chest swelled as he cleared his throat.
“There will be no more fighting over provisions,” he barked, moving to the front of the room, every eye following him as he went. “No one eats or drinks anything without my say-so. We just need to stay calm and quiet.” He paused to give Tony Shepherd a loaded look. The man could have easily doubled as a foghorn. “The government will sort all this out. There’s a military base on our doorstep, it’s just a matter of time until they send someone. Now if anyone has any questions, I’ve set up a temporary office space. By the fridge.”
Keep them away from the supplies, he thought. The best way to control animals was with food. More often than not, he felt like a zookeeper instead of an educator, and never more so than today.
He turned to stare at one of the boarded-up windows, fully aware of what was out there. Most of these people hadn’t seen them, but he had. Gray, decaying skin falling off their skeletons, open wounds and missing limbs, and those awful, dead eyes staring straight ahead. It was all up to him now. They were all looking to him to lead, and lead he would.
* * *
In a quiet corner, Lisa sat beside Chris’s grandmother. Bea winced as she pressed a hand against her chest.
“I’ll get someone,” Lisa said in a small, scared voice.
“The doctors can’t fix it dear,” Bea said with a weak smile. “I doubt there’s much your teachers can do about it. I’m just worried about Christopher.”
Lisa didn’t want to admit it, but so was she.
“He’s seen like every horror movie,” she said, settling in next to Bea, trying very hard to keep the tears out of her eyes. “He’ll know what to do.”
The older woman nodded, but it would have been so much easier to agree if they’d been able to get him on the phone. Lisa would have given anything to go back to when she was just mad at him for not showing up in time for her song; now she had no idea where he was, who he was with. What if he’d been on his way to school to see her and been attacked by those things. A lump began to form in her throat and she squeezed Bea’s hand.
“Your poor mum and dad must be going mad,” Bea sad.
“They probably haven’t even heard,” Lisa replied, certain her parents were safe. “They’re staying with my aunt Helen for Christmas and she lives in th
e middle of nowhere. It’s so boring there, I didn’t want to go with them.”
“What I wouldn’t give to be bored right now,” Bea joked.
Raised voices across the cafeteria interrupted before Lisa could reply. She glanced up to see John’s mom, Julie, talking to Savage.
“This is no good,” Bea whispered, closing her eyes and resting against the wall. “No good at all.”
“Our kids are still at home!” Julie said, almost shouting. “We need to go and get them!”
“Mrs. Wise, I have to insist that you lower your voice,” Savage replied smoothly, clutching his clipboard in front of him and quite prepared to use it against this uppity little woman.
“Oh you insist, do you?” Julie answered, taking another step toward Savage. “And what are you going to do if I don’t?”
“We’re all worried.” Tony stepped in between the two of them, placing a calming hand on Julie’s shoulder. “But it’s not safe for you to leave right now, Jules. We don’t know how many there are. We don’t even know what they are.”
“John’s out there,” Julie replied, turning to Tony in complete desperation. “And your Anna. Tony, they’re our kids.”
It wasn’t as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him. He put his arms around Julie and gave her the most comforting hug he could muster. It was all he’d been able to think about, ever since Arthur had come running into the hall the night before, screaming like a little girl. The school was surrounded, the phones weren’t working, and he had no idea where Anna was. She was a brave, clever, strong girl but those things … Every second he’d spent blocking up the windows and doors, they’d done nothing but hurl themselves against the glass, leaving themselves broken and bloody and still they came back for more. Relentless, as if they couldn’t feel pain. All they wanted was to get inside and eat them. He’d never seen anything like it.
“Look, let’s just give it a couple of hours, then we’ll see.” Tony was talking to Julie, but when he spoke, everyone listened. “Let people do their jobs. The best thing we can do right now is stay put.”
Anna and the Apocalypse Page 6